I love our new tradition of singing a blessing to our children as they leave for their Sunday School classes, and many of us have also uttered blessings for our students at Create Academy.

It has been a hard year in our school environments.  We have witnessed horrific shootings, a teacher protest, inadequate funding and staff combined with other conditions that result in an uncertain world for students.  Now our kids will scatter for the summer, but our blessings will remain with them.

I wanted to share with you one of my favorite prayers for children:

We pray for the children
who sneak Popsicles
before supper,
who erase holes
in math workbooks
who can never find their shoes. 

And we pray for those
who stare at photographers
from behind barbed wire,
who can’t bound down the stairs

in a new pair of sneakers,
who never skipped rope,
who are born in places where
we wouldn’t be caught dead,
who never go to the circus,
who live in an X-rated world.

We pray for children
who bring us sticky kisses and
fistfuls of dandelions,
who hug us in a hurry and
forget their lunch money.

And we pray for those
who never get dessert,
who have no safe blanket to
drag behind them,
who watch their parents watch them die
who can’t find bread to steal,
who don’t have rooms to clean,
whose pictures aren’t on
anybody’s dresser,
whose monsters are real.

We pray for children
who spend all their allowance
before Tuesday,
who throw tantrums
in the store
and pick at their food,
who like ghost stories
who shove dirty clothes
under the bed,
who never rinse out the tub,
who get visits from
the tooth fairy,
who don’t like to be kissed
in front of the carpool,
who squirm in church and
scream in the phone,
whose tears we sometimes laugh at
and whose smiles make us cry.

And we pray for those whose nightmares come
in the daytime,
who will eat anything,
who have never seen a dentist,
who aren’t spoiled by anybody,
who go to bed hungry and
cry themselves to sleep,
who live and move
but have no being.

We pray for children
who want to be carried and for
those who must,
whom we never give up on
and for those who don’t get a second chance,
for those we smother and
for those who will grab the hand
of anyone kind enough to offer it.

Go our children with our blessing.  Amen.

This prayer is in memory of the children and teacher who were killed in the shooting March 24, 1998 in Jonesboro, Arkansas.